Lang spends his free time finding, probing and excavating old outhouse sites. Not that he has a scatological perversion; rather, he's a rare breed of amateur arche ologist, unearthing

refuse-turned-riches hidden from view of unsuspecting home owners.

Most of his finds consist of old bottles, which can command hundreds of dollars each from antique dealers. Who says nothing of value goes down the toilet?

Lang is 36 and lives, appropriately enough, at the end of John Street in this Livingston County burg about 60 miles east of Peoria. A couple years ago, he learned of the hobby from a Bloomington man. Fascinated, Lang researched the subject (yes, there are books about

this sort of thing) and began digging.

Later , he earned his PhD -- that's Privy Hole Digger -- from the National Association of Privy Diggers in Richmond, Va., apparently the cradle of American latrine excavation.

Not that the pastime is confined to this country. Lang corresponds and trades with privy-diggers in Europe, which can boast a much longer and richer history of outhouses than the

United States.

So, you ask, how can you join the fun of digging through ancient human waste?

Lang scours old plats to find where houses stood in the 19th century. He surveys the sites, guessing the locations of long-lost privies, which often sat along alleys or property lines.

If the ground lies bare, he'll knock on the door of the homeowner and ask for permission to dig.

"Sometimes I get laughs," he says. "It's about 50-50 (whether he gets the OK)."

Next, he grabs a probe, a T-shaped bar crafted by Lang, a welder. He jabs the tip of the 5-foot probe into the ground, slowly piercing the earth by forcing his body against the cross bar.

If he's lucky, about four feet down the probe will slide rapidly through soft matter, the decayed waste of a privy. He says that after a hundred-plus years of rot ting, the refuse poses no health

danger, and doesn't stink anymore.

Then Lang grabs a spade and shovels for treasure.

"I've had people laugh at me for digging privies, but I've had the same people buy (excavated) stuff from me," he says. "I've had oodles of people stand around, wondering what I'm doing."

He's looking for junk. Way back when, folks didn't use privies just to relieve themselves; outhouses often doubled as garbage dumps, and sometimes hiding places.

"The old man sat out there drinking whiskey and didn't want the old lady to know, so he'd hide the bottle down the privy," Lang says.

Bottles, along with other heavy objects like discarded crocks and porcelein dolls, would settle to the bottom of the 4-cubic-foot privy holes. Shoveling that deeply can take three hours, but Lang thinks it's worth the effort.

Page 2 of 2 - Recently, he discovered a cobalt-blue soda bottle from the late 1800s. Like many of his finds, he sold it, that one for $650 to a Chicago collector.

Lang is something of a collector himself. Inside his front door sit shelves dis playing row after row of ancient bottles. Most noticeable is a large, green ish bottle shaped like a fish,

probably worth about $450, he says.

"It was what they considered medicine, but it was about 80 proof," he says.

Indeed, his research has unearthed interesting nuggets of about yesteryear's booze-sodden pharmacology. He points to a Civil War-era glass container imprinted: "Dr. J. Hostetter Stomach Bitters."

"He had a contract with the South," Lang says. "Be fore they'd go into battle, these regiments would drink it for courage. Well, all they'd do is get ripped."

How did a Rebel bottle end up in Forrest? Lang has no idea, but he says he's found bottles from all over the country.

He closely looks over each one, as he knows of a digger who got poisoned by unknowingly handling a container of strychnine.

His privy hunts have covered much of Pontiac, Forrest and other slices of the county. But his biggest motherlode might sit right next door in an empty back yard where stood a hotel in the late 1800s.

The propety belongs to his uncle, from whom he's trying to get permission to dig. Lang's eyes widen at the prospect.

"It's a neat feeling that if you find a bottle in a privy, you're the first one to touch it in 100 years," he says. "It's not like going out and buy ing it. "